Jamrach's Menagerie (10 page)

I said, ‘Oh,’ and that was al .

‘I’ve only got a minute,’ she said.

‘Work?’

‘Ma wants me.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s going to be funny with you lot gone.’

I laughed. ‘Wish you were coming?’ I asked.

She pul ed a face. ‘Whale ships stink.’

We were awkward. This may be the last time, I thought. I put my arms out and gathered her in close. ‘I hate you both for going,’ she said, suddenly tearful. When I kissed her on the mouth she kissed me back. Long sweet minutes til she pul ed back and said she had to go, and took my hand and dragged me outside with my head reeling. I walked her to the back gate. Cobbe was mucking about in the yard. The lioness was gnawing peaceful y on a lump of beef, holding onto it with her paws, licking amorously, eating with closed eyes.

‘You’l look after him, won’t you?’ Ishbel said. ‘He’s not as brave as he makes out, you know.’

‘Neither am I.’

‘Pa won’t shake his hand,’ she said. ‘He cried. Don’t tel him I told you.’

‘’Course not.’

We stood smiling in a slightly demented way.

‘He’s a big baby real y,’ she said.

‘So am I,’ I said.

‘How’s your ma?’ she asked.

It might never have happened.

‘She’l do. She asked Charley to have a word with me about staying and getting into the fish business. “You serious?” I said. “Work on a fish stal or go around the world?”’

She laughed. ‘Oh wel ,’ tidying her hair, ‘better be on my way,’ and was gone.

Three years and come back a man, come back changed.

See the strange places I itch to see. See the sea. Could you ever get sick of the sight of the sea? She said that to me one day when we were standing on the bridge. And she had never even seen it, and I pray she never wil .

I went home and looked out of the window at sunset. It was May. The sky was a red eye, the rooftops black. There were islands in the sky. The waves were bobbing. It was the Azores, those beautiful islands. Jaffy Brown is gone. He turned,
was
turned, a ghost on a god-haunted ocean. My eyes and the indigo horizon are one and the same.

Early in the morning, a straggle of dockers and lightermen on the quay, a bunch of old women and a few mothers, not mine. Ma had gone al distant on me. We’d said our goodbyes. She hated al that, she said. If you’re going to go, just go, and get yourself back as quick as you can, and don’t expect me to like it. Mr Jamrach didn’t want me to go either.

When I’d taken my leave of him the night before he’d clapped me on the arm and brought his face close to mine, and stared unwaveringly with watery blue eyes, making me uncomfortable. ‘You look out for yourself, Jaf,’ he said gruffly.

‘I’l not see you on the quay.’ We’d shaken hands very cordial y and smiled awkwardly, til someone came to the door wanting birds, al owing me to slip away fast.

Dan Rymer’s wife was standing on the quay, a tal , straight-backed, fair woman with children in her skirts and a baby on her arm. A shipload of Portuguese sailors disembarking for a spree cast eyes on Ishbel, come straight from Paddy’s Goose in her red shoes.

She didn’t cry or make a fuss. Each of us got a peck on the mouth. She hugged Tim for a long time and me for a little less.

‘You’l bring him back safe, Jaf,’ she said.

I stil see her standing there, waving, shielding her eyes from the sun.

5

When at last I set foot on-board, the terror that churned my guts was al one with a kind of joy. I wanted to look a whale in the eye. The only whale I’d ever seen was on a picture in the seamen’s bethel, the one that swal owed Jonah. It had no face. It was just a great block, a monstrosity with a mouth.

But a whale did have eyes, I knew, and I wanted to look into them, as I looked into the eyes of al the animals that came in and out of Jamrach’s yard. Why did I do this? I don’t know.

Nothing I ever solved.

We were al of us wild, great thumping fools with thumping hearts running about that first morning, making a pig’s ear of whatever we turned our hands to. We knew nothing, nothing at al , and we didn’t know each other yet either. Eight of us were green, eight out of a score or more of men – men, I say

– fourteen our youngest, Felix Duggan, a mouthy kid from Orpington, sixty our oldest, a scrawny black cal ed Sam.

Thank God for Dan looking out for us, with us but not with us.

Seven years since I met him, but I never knew him til we sailed together. I do now. I know him better than anyone now.

The
Lysander
was a beauty, ageing, wel preserved, smal and neat. The captain watched from the quarterdeck as we made fools of ourselves, while the first mate, a florid, thick-featured madman cal ed Mr Rainey, strode about swearing and cursing at us in a deranged manner. Christ Jesus, what have I done? I thought. Am I mad? Oh, Ma. The masts and the yards and the sails, the whole great soaring thing was the web of an insane spider against the sky. Ropes, ropes, a mil ion ropes and every bloody one with its own name, and if you got the wrong one you buggered up the whole thing. How we ever got off I’ve no idea. It was the efforts of those few who knew what they were doing: the old black cal ed Sam, another black by the name of Gabriel, a tal Oriental cal ed Yan, and our Dan. These four got the ship off with the help of a few lads not much older than me and Tim, who’d sailed maybe once or twice before and therefore considered themselves old seadogs. We greenies stumbled and bumbled around getting in everyone’s way. I lost sight of Tim.

Lost Dan. At every moment I tried to look as if I was confidently on my way from one important task to the next, wearing a face I hoped gave an impression of eager intel igence. I caught sight of the dockside moving away, the people a blur, heard the sudden sweet hol ow chiming of a London clock bidding me a long farewel .

A boy with a round dark head appeared very suddenly in front of me in my confusion. His face was awkward, stoic in its expression, the mouth self-conscious. He looked like I felt, wavering on his feet with no idea of what to do. For a second we locked eyes in dumb mutual understanding. Then he smiled with his mouth stil closed and stiff, a peculiarly leisurely smile for the circumstances.

Mr Rainey, a clatter of boots and a horse-like snorting, landed between us from above like a god-thrown thunderbolt. ‘What do you think this is?’ he demanded. ‘A garden party?’ clouted the boy on the head and sent him flying. ‘Cretins,’ he roared, stomping away down the deck, bandy-legged and malevolent. God knows why he didn’t hit me. Too zealous in his progress towards the next target, I suppose, some poor boy above in the rigging: ‘You fucking imbecile!’ he screamed, head back. ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and al your fucking bastard kin! Get down here!’

I got away quick, looked for Tim, but couldn’t see him. I stood useless. Someone clipped me on the back of the head and told me to look sharp.

‘I don’t know what to do!’ I appealed, suddenly outraged.

How could anyone expect me to know what to do?

The man was a lanky, skinny thing with a long sensitive nose like an anteater’s and arched brows that gave him a clownish appearance. ‘Here,’ he said, and hauled me to the windlass. Oh God, the bloody windlass. A great horizontal wheel on the deck up near our fo’c’s’le – oh, to be down there with my sea chest – pushing it round alongside a big hefty blond boy built like an ox. Even he was grunting and straining, swearing doggedly in his own language. I was breaking my fucking back. The long skinny cove jumped in to help us, straight brown hair, thin as everything else about him, dangling in his eyes. Nothing much on his bones, but he was strong. ‘
Hup
, now,’ he said, ‘
push
!’

Push. Push. Beyond anything you ever thought you could do, push. I was vaguely aware of the others running about, whistles, shouts, laughter, massive creakings and groanings of the ship as we manhandled her, and of a new weightlessness that gave me a fal ing sensation even though my feet were fixed firmly on the timbers.

The shipload of Portuguese sailors clapped and cheered us on, and there was no more time to look back to the drifting quay, where Ishbel watched with the dozy lightermen and grieving mothers and the wife of Dan Rymer.

We took the watery road out of town. The wharves and taverns drifted by, the sun grew brighter, throwing gold over the warehouses and the tops of the ripples. Sails flapped in the breeze. The captain, a solid, square-chested, square-faced man with a pale freckled face and thin ginger eyebrows, came and walked among us with a shaggy brown dog at his heels, half smiling at no one and speaking only to his first mate. I was glad there was a dog on-board. I hadn’t expected that.

Me and Tim stuck with Dan. We had a lot to learn, he said, and set about teaching us the naming of things right away.

Al we ever knew fel away behind us like arms letting go.

The land became green and rose up on both sides, and the marshes swal owed us up. The mournful cal ing of long-legged birds swooped above the reeds. Seagul s with savage eyes sailed vigorously on the air alongside, keeping us company al the way to North Foreland, where Mr Rainey sent me up to the masthead.

I’m a good climber and I have no fear of heights; it was the best of al times to go aloft, with the ful sea swel ing before us and the topgal ant sails up to take the wind. First time I’d seen the real sea. Too big when you first see it, of course. A shining you could never have imagined, even though you’ve imagined so much. Up there, ful sail on the
Lysander
, I was riding a living thing. Her bowsprit rose and fel like the motion of a horse’s neck at ful canter. The spray roared, and the whaleboats shuddered in their holdings. I looked down and saw Dan Rymer at his ease, speaking with the captain on the quarterdeck. Scrawny Sam, his face a mass of wrinkles, ran along a spar with the ease of a waterfront cat, smiling as he went. The captain’s shaggy brown dog came trotting along the deck and lifted its leg against the mainmast, and I had no notion of time or the future or anything else at al , and was completely and quite terrifyingly happy and knew that I’d done the right thing.

Later, just before the captain gave his speech, me and Tim had a single minute’s peace standing at the rail together looking down at the sea. He put his arm round my shoulders.

‘This is the life, Jaf,’ he said. He’d been like a dog let off the leash al day. It was being outside he’d missed, not the animals. He was trembling faintly, whether it was because he was cold or nervous, I don’t know. It’s a strange thing when you first go off into the unknown. You want it and you’re scared. Tim would never admit he was scared. Never. He was, though, any fool could see that.

‘This is the life,’ I said.

That was the whole of our conversation, then the captain cal ed us up on the quarterdeck for the choosing of the watches and the whaleboat crews.

We had three whaleboats, not counting the spares. I didn’t want to be on Rainey’s. We had Captain Proctor’s and Rainey’s and Comeragh’s – the second mate that is – who turned out to be the tal thin one with the big nose who’d clipped me on the back of the head and told me to look sharp. He and Rainey both had a good six inches on Captain Proctor, who, though stout and strong, was not tal .

They stood respectful y, two tal , dark vases flanking a pale round pot, Rainey with his hands clasping some papers behind his back and his feet apart, Comeragh seeming to be smiling al the time. But it was just the way his face was.

‘I applaud you, gentlemen, on a magnificent performance,’

the captain said, his eyes travel ing over al of us, his face revealing nothing. We, who didn’t know, took our cues from those more experienced hands who laughed, instinctively knowing somehow that this was a good-natured jibe and not rank sarcasm. A hint of a smile appeared upon the captain’s face. ‘We shal get along,’ he said, with his eyes never lighting anywhere, ‘if we al remember one thing.’ Long pause, roaming eyes. ‘A ship is a dangerous place, a whale ship especial y so.’ Long pause. ‘You wil obey orders from myself and any of the mates instantly. There wil be no exceptions. It’s as simple as that.’

He had a clear ringing voice, wel spoken, stronger and far more impressive than his face, which was too boyish for a captain’s. The dog, lol ing with a stupid expression against his leg, did nothing to lessen the impression. He talked enthusiastical y for ten minutes about duty and obedience and pul ing together, and said that those of us who’d not sailed before would be given minders, and were to do what we were told. ‘Some of you wil know that this voyage has a secondary purpose,’ he said. ‘We have on-board Mr Rymer’

– a nod towards Dan – ‘whose commission is to hunt wildlife. When we reach the Dutch East Indies we wil be briefly diverted somewhat from our primary concern, which is, of course, to take as many barrels of oil as we can. But that need not concern any of you now. You are whale catchers and that is a great and dangerous profession. Your job now is to learn everything you possibly can as fast as you can.’

There was a law on ship as tight as any, he said, with clear rules and clear punishments for the breaking of them. It was very simple. These rules could be consulted at any time as a copy of them was permanently on display in both steerage and fo’c’s’le. Anyone who could not read could avail himself of the help of a reader.